


Five People Matt Saracen Never Fell In Love With

by denynothing1



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: 5 Things, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-12
Updated: 2008-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-27 06:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/denynothing1/pseuds/denynothing1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt doesn't fall in love. A lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five People Matt Saracen Never Fell In Love With

**Author's Note:**

> For lilydale.
> 
> Written Season 2-ish, so later canon may not apply.

(1)  
It was only later -- more years later than he cared to say -- that Matt could admit to himself that he'd never fallen in love with either Julie Taylor _or_ Carlotta Alonso. 

He'd fallen in lust and in like, into longing and into relief from loneliness, but he hadn't fallen in love. It was only after he truly did fall in love that he discovered the difference. 

Being in love didn't mean that he'd never feel lust or like or longing or relief from loneliness again. What it did was make him want to write poetry about those things. Not that he ever did write poetry -- I mean, jeez -- but he thought about it.

 

(2)  
After Landry made either stupidest or the bravest move in all creation (Matt still isn't sure how to call that one), Tyra Collette started to look a little bit, sort of -- in some alternate universe maybe -- approachable. That still doesn't mean Matt could ever fall in love with her. 

Sure, since she's been with Landry there's been a spark of fun and a kind of scary playfulness in those pale, blue eyes of hers, and that's kind of been… not a relief, exactly, but something. Something a little bit better. 

Tyra used to look right through Matt; now she looks at him the way a lioness might look at a fuzzy, baby duck. Matt isn't at all convinced it's an improvement, but at least he no longer falls all over his big, dumb feet or his slow, stupid tongue when she's around. 

And she's been around enough now that he's noticed something else, something he never saw in her eyes before and isn't so sure he wants or needs to see there now: a well of anger and sadness so deep it must have taken an ocean of toughness to hide it from him and everybody else for so long. He wonders at first if it was Landry who helped make that pain visible, but he doesn't wonder for long. Because the odd thing is, the pain fades when Tyra looks at Landry; dissolves into a puzzled sort of yearning that says if Matt is a snack, Landry, maybe, could be a feast. 

Matt loves Landry. It catches him by surprise to realize that Tyra does, too.

 

(3)  
The first rule of varsity football in Texas -- and peewee football and junior varsity football and college football and pro football and touch football and even goddamn soccer -- is that you don't fall in love with teammates. 

So of course Matt never fell in love with Smash. 

He never even thought about it. Okay, after the first time Smash caught a wobbly pass and made Matt look like he knew what the hell he was doing, he maybe thought about it a little. Because at that moment, for the first time in his life, Matt connected with someone while doing the thing he loved most, and that is surely a powerful thing. But there's no falling in love with teammates in Texas football. At least, that's what people say. Matt is okay with saying he loves Smash, though. If he has to add, "like a brother," so he won't get his ass handed to him, he's okay with that, too. 

He'll still be speaking the truth.

 

(4) Lyla Garrity? No. Also, hell no. He doesn't know much, but he's known that since seventh grade. 

When looking at girls suddenly became a contact sport between his head and the rest of him, not falling in love with Lyla Garrity was one of the few battles his head managed to win. It warned the parts that perked up at long, shiny black hair and even longer tan thighs under the one JV cheerleader skirt that always seemed shorter than the rest that she'd be the ever loving end of him. 

Matty-boy, it said, she'd swallow you whole. (And not in the happy fun way that the guys in the junior high locker room were always laughing about, even if nobody would ever explain to him exactly what that meant.) 

Even back then, Lyla was so… everything. So confident. So beautiful. So smart. And so full of drama that fireworks would likely give up and snuff themselves out the minute they saw her coming their way. 

Nothing much has changed since those days, except for the way the spectacle surrounding Miss Lyla has only gotten bigger. And wilder. And noisier. Now that she's got Street _and_ Riggins _and_ that DJ guy all on the hook, the whole thing feels like it's just a couple bottle rockets short of an Alamo Days jamboree. 

Matt thinks falling in love like that must be the fastest way _ever_ to get burned.

 

(5) Matt certainly never fell in love with Tami Taylor. He can't even call her Tami, nowadays when he comes back to visit, any more than he can ever call Coach anything but Coach. 

Leaving Dillon changed everything for Matt; coming back shows him how the seed of what he is now was planted in this dusty, gray, frustrating wonder of a never-changing place. He's happy now, in love with a woman who turned out to be brave and funny, sassy and strong, who loves him as if it's the most logical thing in the world, with a passion that has no logic to it at all.

But Mrs. Coach? Nah. He never fell in love with her.


End file.
